Discussion Title: Is it reasonable to create a directly democratic and all-inclusive internet-based forum to address global issues?

1. Is it reasonable to create a directly democratic and all-inclusive internet-based forum \(at least including a symbolic governing body\) to address global issues?
1.1. Pro: We cannot adequately address global issues without doing bypassing today's insular systems where the power is wielded by those who are never held accountable to the people whose lives they affect.
1.1.1. Pro: The UN Security Council gives veto power to 5 countries, 2 of which are autocracies and one who still has a monarch with limited power. They make decisions about how to end armed conflicts, some of which they themselves are embroiled in. It makes the UN incapable of acting for the good of humanity when it comes to such questions.
1.2. Pro: What other reasonable alternative do we have? The international systems presently in place have in almost every instance proven inadequate and painfully slow to meet global needs like combating systematic inequality, combating racism, and global environmental issues. It's time we tried something new.
1.2.1. Pro: Autocracies are on the rise and have been for the past decade [v-dem.net](https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/de/39/de39af54-0bc5-4421-89ae-fb20dcc53dba/democracy_report.pdf), and unless we actively apply democratic innovations with modern techniques, our existing democratic institutions are at risk.
1.2.2. Pro: The UN has been around for the better part of a century, and yet armed conflicts persist, and its elite in the Security Council all profit from the arms trade which fuels these conflicts.
1.2.3. Pro: The IMF and World Bank have not succeeded in significantly eliminating debt in underdeveloped countries, which is a major contributing factor to persistent world poverty.
1.3. Pro: The internet opens up a world of possibilities, where communication is instantaneous, where all participants can comment or vote in real time, where people's identities can be checked against national databases for drivers-licences, ID cards, passports etc. and where security through things like block-chain technology is virtually tamper-proof.
1.3.1. Pro: Email outperforms snail mail the same way virtual democracy ought to be able to outperform whatever it is we have now.
1.4. Pro: There are many displaced peoples and refugees in the world who are represented by no one, and groups whose human-rights are denied/abused who require a new system such as this to address their needs.
1.4.1. Pro: There are presently 26 million refugees [UNHCR - Figures at a Glance](https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html) who lack any form of democratic representation.
1.4.2. Pro: 4.2 million people are stateless.
1.4.3. Con: Although many people require more representation, this does not prove that an internet-based forum is the ideal vehicle to achieving that representation.
1.4.3.1. Con: True, but neither does it prove the opposite. The number of mobile phones and the quality of internet access among displaced peoples is significant to whether or not they would be adequately represented, and there is no reliable information regarding this. The only way to find out if such a forum would adequately represent them is to actually test it.
1.5. Con: There is no precedent for this, and therefore no global mandate.
1.5.1. Con: There's only one way to address issues of precedent. Try it and find out if it works or not, then you have a precedent.
1.5.2. Con: Just because something has never been done before doesn't make it an unreasonable development.
1.5.2.1. Pro: There was no precedent for Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Tesla or even the Internet itself, either.
1.5.3. Pro: Given that this is something that has not been done before, it is difficult to assess how reasonable an idea it is.
1.6. Con: Internet based forums cannot be all inclusive until everyone has access to the internet.
1.6.1. Pro: In 2019, only [57%](https://www.oberlo.com/blog/internet-statistics) of humans were active internet users. With so many people lacking access, we cannot begin to consider ideas like governance via 100% connectivity.
1.6.2. Con: Including everyone is unrealistic in anything but theoretical models. Young children are not mature enough, while the elderly may lack both the physical and mental capacity to participate, and then there are the very poor, the handicapped, and the illiterate. Including everyone therefore becomes more of a vision, whereas reaching a significant portion of the 57% of humans who are active internet users would still be a considerable success.
1.6.3. Con: It is a reasonable goal to provide internet access to everyone.
1.7. Con: It would be difficult to scale an online discussion where the number of participants can scale to billions of people.
1.7.1. Con: Discussions need to be limited since we humans are generally incapable of following multiple arguments going on at the same time. Thus any such democracy would require unique hybrid solutions to limit the main discussion to a single proverbial thread.
1.7.2. Con: There aren't billions of unique arguments in each debate, so billions would not need to create arguments. Billions of votes on issues would be systemically possible though.
1.7.3. Con: And since it would be difficult, great care would need to be taken by those engineering the system to ensure that the right balance of inclusiveness and effectiveness was reached. Difficult, yes, but entirely possible.
1.8. Pro: The existing forms of democratic national governance are based on 18th, 19th and 20th century methods. They create clumsy, time consuming structures that limit the power of the people they are meant to empower. They are riddled with authoritarian compromises and nondemocratic elements. We can do far better with 21st century methods
1.8.1. Pro: The present form of electing legislators limits citizens ability to directly affect decisions. It only allows the citizen some power when those legislators are up for election again, and even that is severely limited. Those who end up voting for a losing candidate have no power whatsoever until the next election, and even those who voted "right" cannot affect individual decisions made by that legislator.
1.8.2. Pro: Where legislators are elected from a limited constituency, but occupy positions where they make decisions for the whole nation, they often make decisions primarily based on what most benefits the citizens who elected them, even when that decision is bad for the country as a whole.
1.8.3. Pro: Democratic monarchies still give at least some power to people who inherited their power.
1.8.4. Pro: The US senate allows for extremely unequal representation of its citizens. 550,000 Wyoming residents have as many senators as California's nearly 40 million residents, and 2.9 million Puerto Ricans have none.
1.9. Con: Internet-based institutions are prone to cyber-attacks, and the information, statistics, and even vote results on their websites can be compromised and can therefore not be relied upon to be truthful.
1.9.1. Con: Bitcoin and cyber-currencies have solved these questions and are today considered reliable enough for tens or hundreds of millions of people to invest their savings in them. People generally don't invest in things they distrust. This proves cyber-institutions can be safeguarded enough to gain widespread trust.
1.10. Con: For a democratic and inclusive internet-based forum, everyone would require a device with which to access the internet. It would be difficult for everyone to have access to these devices.
1.10.1. Pro: Many of these devices such as mobile phones and laptops tend to be [expensive](https://www.statista.com/statistics/283334/average-smartphone-price-by-region/).
1.10.1.1. Con: And yet, more people in India \(as an example of a developing country\) have access to a mobile phone than have access to a toilet. [telegraph.co.uk](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7593567/India-has-more-mobile-phones-than-toilets-UN-report.html#:~:text=India%27s%20mobile%20subscribers%20totalled%20563.73,the%20country%27s%201.2%20billion%20population.&text=The%20report%20gave%20a%20rough,including%20labour%2C%20materials%20and%20advice.)
1.10.2. Con: In an increasingly technology-based society, it is expected that more people will anyhow acquire access to technological devices.
1.11. Con: MAking it all inclusive means allowing entry to individuals who have no reliable way of proving that they are who they say they are \(opens the door to trolls and manipulation of the system\).
1.11.1. Con: Most adults have valid forms of picture ID which are registered in internationally accessible databases. That together with block-chain technology could form the basis of a secure method of identifying an individual.
1.12. Con: If what is meant by all-inclusive means people from all nations democratically voting, then this would be highly problematic as there are fundamental disagreements between people around the planet that are hard to reconcile which would lead to odd results.
1.12.1. Con: And despite all our differences, there are some things about which it seems a majority of people om the planet can agree, like that politicians need to do more to combat global warming so the next generation is left with a livable planet, or that the international coordination of the Corona Crisis has been abysmal.
1.12.2. Pro: Arab countries like Saudi Arabia have been pushing for global blasphemy laws for a very long time, laws which have mostly been abolished in the West. [1](https://www.oic-oci.org/topic/?t_id=24852&t_ref=15190&lan=en) [2](https://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2015/06/human-rights-group-warns-against-global-blasphemy-law) [3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation_of_religion_and_the_United_Nations)
1.12.3. Pro: Many countries have an ongoing conflict which is often even physically fought about, resolving these via a global forum will be neigh impossible and might make matters worse.
1.12.3.1. Pro: Often the result would not be the most just decision, but whichever side can garner most support for their side.
1.12.3.1.1. Con: This may be true where a majority of stakeholders are NOT informed and involved in decision-making \(like in physical countries with the possible exception of Switzerland\) but would virtually disappear in a system where all the stakeholders are informed and may participate. Justice is defined by what the majority of people think it is. The alternative is a minority imposing their beliefs on a majority, which is just wrong and often leads to oppression.
1.12.3.1.2. Con: This assumes a system where party politics steers decision-making, or where decision-makers for some other reason do not adequately consult those who will be affected by the decision. Such bodies often make "democratic" decisions which do not reflect the will of the people and lead to disastrous results. There is probably little or no reason to include such bad methods in a virtual format.
1.12.3.2. Con: Many conflicts are fueled and facilitated by external factors which are loosely regulated at best. The global arms industry is a prime example of this. A global democratic forum could have a positive effect on limiting the flow of offensive weapons and thus even limit the ability of waring parties to continue their conflict.
1.12.4. Pro: Disinformation campaigns outside the forum will make people vote in problematic ways.
1.12.4.1. Pro: Brexit is a good example, where people voted against their own best interests.
1.12.4.1.1. Con: There are lessons to be learned from Brexit, where the decision was manipulated by shrewd operators, and when the populace realized their "mistake" they were not given the appropriate opportunity to rectify it. Brexit may be a good example of inadequate democracy at work.
1.12.4.1.1.1. Con: There is no good way to rectify manipulation of public opinion.
1.12.4.1.1.1.1. Pro: This is the same problem with bogus claims that people believe regarding vaccines causing autism or homeopathy working better than a placebo. Inserting doubt is much easier than removing it again.
1.12.4.1.1.1.1.1. Pro: Absolutely! Free access to factual information is a necessity in order to make intelligent decisions. When people are deceived by cleverly disguised \(or even nonsensical\) falsehoods it undermines decision-making. Such false claims are often controversial in nature, and tend to gain far more publicity than merited. It's a problem for democracy, and a major reason why autocracy is on the rise. But that does not mean autocracies necessarily make better decisions.
1.12.4.1.1.1.2. Con: True- Once such manipulation is a fact there is little that can be done in the short term, but that doesn't mean there cannot be ways of stopping that manipulation from spreading in the first place.
1.12.4.1.1.2. Con: Even when they realized that there has been manipulation there is no provision or actionable path what to do next.
1.12.4.1.1.2.1. Pro: Invalidating the Brexit referendum would have caused a lot of problems.
1.12.4.1.1.2.1.1. Con: This discussion thread ends here since Brexit is a national issue and therefore not the purview of the proposed forum to deal with global issues.
1.12.4.1.1.2.2. Con: In the case of Brexit, with the UK's very flawed democratic system, that's true. It's a case from which to learn when building a better democracy. The only time there can be no path forward is when there is no popular consensus, and thus there is no decision to be made.
1.12.4.2. Con: While it is true that disinformation campaigns do have an effect, the logistics and cost of running a global disinformation campaign would in all likelihood be astronomical and thus unrealistic in a global democracy.
1.12.5. Con: Problems with disagreements exist in all democracies and are addressed effectively by the laws governing such institutions so as to mitigate or limit the negative consequences on the institution.
1.12.6. Con: Even the \[debatably\] democratic forum of the UN General Assembly has been able to hinder things like blasphemy laws from gaining international recognition, and has in fact made them illegal even in the countries trying to push for their international acceptance. This is a good example of how international democratic forums can defuse such disagreements.
1.12.6.1. Con: The disagreement hasn't be defused, nor has the opposing side being convinced that their side is wrong, they were just outvoted.
1.13. Con: Making it all inclusive involves allowing minors to make decisions.
1.13.1. Con: The minimum voting age around the world ranges from 16 to 25. A standard voting age based on scientific evidence of maturity would be preferable to arbitrary decisions about voting ages.